I received a form from the PIP people in the post in June this year. I have been getting the benefit for around two years and it seems it is time for them to check up on me. I rang around trying to find somone to help me fill it in and was lucky enough to get an appointment several weeks later with the Citizens Advice Bureau. In 2015 I received help to fill in the form from Age UK, but it due to cut backs they cannot assist me now as I am only 56 years old. It seems unwise to assume that because I qualified for the benefit in 2015 that my assessment will be plain sailing. I have been reading the supplied leaflet and online advice to make sure I have covered everything.

In the last year my health and mobility has declined to the point where I don't go into Barnsley by myself except in exceptional circumstances. I haven't driven for years, and in June, following a seizure, was officially told to stop driving by my consultant. The bus ride into town is long and tiring, and everywhere I need to go is a long way from the bus station. I do still manage to get to our local Co-op on a good day leaning on my Sholley. I don't go to the Archives any more, partially because a snub by the Council last year caused me to lose a lot of confidence and as a consequence I have lost touch with fellow researchers.

My mother in law has become my lifeline. Despite being very poorly herself she always comes to my rescue by booking a taxi to get both of us to places. I confess to being scared to get in a taxi by myself, I can't pin point why, but probably connected to my long standing dread of having workmen in the house. Sadly I always assume they are casing the joint for a later burglary. When I lived on the Manor in Sheffield we were burgled, that must be more than twenty two years ago as I remember Persephone was a new kitten at the time. We were very, very poor. All they got was our tiny rented tv and some dvds which they carried away in my first mother in law's borrowed shopping trolley!

We went to see Citizens Advice with my form in July. My m-in-law booked a taxi to pick her up and then me. She came with me into the interview room and was able to contribute to the form filling by recalling things I had forgotten or had thought were not important enough to mention. Both she and the CAB man told me several times to stop saying that I worked around a thing or could just about manage, because as that was only applicable on a good day what was I doing the rest of the time?

Yes, on a bad day (like today and yesterday) I stay in bed in my nightclothes all day and eat toast, cheese and crackers and instant porridge. I am too tired to read and writing this post has been taken in short spurts over the last two to three hours. I either sleep a lot, or watch tv, often both at the same time!

At the end of the session in July, which took several hours, the man said he thought I should be getting more PIP. I don't quite know how to take that, I know I'm worse than I was two years ago, and add on the escalating knee problems and the epilepsy ... I do spend more now on the taxis, and tins of soup and ready meals. I have even arranged a deal with the hairdressers a few yards up the road. They will wash, but not dry, my long hair for £4. Which is good as bending over the sink is getting very difficult. Oh, and I'm not supposed to bath or shower when I'm alone - that's the epilepsy again.

My m-in-law has booked a taxi for this Friday. Cross your fingers for me. That's more than two whole days away, and I am going to worry every second of it.

Last Friday the new Barnsley East MP Stephanie Peacock wrote in our local newspaper, the Barnsley Chronicle, that she was adding her name to the list of people calling for the rollout of Universal credit to be halted. I hadn't realised until then that it had being rolled out here, being lucky enough to have a husband earning a living wage. But this morning I saw a horrendous tweet from a local parish councillor referring to the benefit. It seems that people must apply online, and at the end of that process (which took the councillor one hour and 25 minutes to complete on behalf of his non IT literate local resident) the person claiming has to ring a Premium rate phone number, up to 45p a minute, to book an appointment.

What planet are the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) living on?

I am aware, from my own experiences in Barnsley helping with Adult Education IT classes, that a substantial portion of the population are unable to use a computer even if they were able to access one. I taught a range of people from young unemployed and women in their 30s who had a poor educational background to elderly pensioners who wanted to learn so they could keep in touch with family by email or Skype. Most of these classes now attract a high fee, only the very basic short course 'Computing for the Terrified' is still free to people on certain benefits. Even pensioners have to pay part or all of the fees for Adult Education classes following Council funding cuts a few years ago.

I am 56 years old and learned to use a PC when my children started school in the 90s. But that was with the help of friends and word processing classes at Sheffield College, happily free to an aspiring young single mum on benefits. I still don't have one of those fantastical mobile phones, although I am writing this on a tablet computer connected to our wi-fi whilst lying in bed (the last few days I have been in a lot of pain, causing disturbed sleep and a higher than usual intake of painkillers). A significant number of people who attended school before the use of computers was widespread, let's say ANYONE OVER 40, will have no idea how to use one.

Another few examples - I occasionally attend a local history group at Cudworth 'Resource Centre'. Or Library to the rest of us! The members of the group are mostly very elderly yet motivated, so a self-selected group of people more likely than others their age to try new things. They attend regularly for a chat and a cup of tea. Only three or four of the fifteen regular attendees ever use the group's desktop PC. After a lot of initial teething problems with the new Council wi-fi, which requires use of a mobile phone to get a code to log in, they manage to log the PC onto the web most weeks. A straw poll around the table earlier this year showed that about half the members had a mobile phone (but some of those did not carry them about) with a few having a tablet and wi-fi at home, usually set up for them by concerned children or grandchildren. The rest had no interest in modern technology, in fact some were vehemently opposed to its use. These people will, therefore, always require help to access online facilities.

Recently a drop in day was advertised at the Library (Resource Centre pah!) for people wanting to learn more about Council online services. I turned up and found no actual advisors in attendance. I was directed to one of the library PCs to fill out some kind of form! Nearby was one of our Councillors who had also attended expecting to be shown the ropes by a real person. What use would that session have been to most of my history group colleagues? And yet access to many Council services is now only available online. Don't even get me started about ordering a new bin when yours has been stolen! To top it all the Benefits Advice service has just been closed in Cudworth Library! I hope they are not just referring people to Citizens Advice, because they are already swamped with work.

Finally - In order to allow the history group members to participate in a consultation exercise about the Library last year I had to ask the staff for paper forms. These should apparently have been readily available, in fact I had to beg for them from staff who had been told to only hand them out in exceptional circumstances. People were expected to book a session on one of the Library computers and fill in the online questionnaire. If they could have been persuaded to do this, not at all a given, it would have taken me hours (or days!) to coach twelve people to have the skills to answer the questions online. As it was they filled in the forms during the tea break of their normal meeting and then went back to business happy that they had been able to have a say in the consultation.

I know that older people are not (yet) required to apply for Universal Credit, but many of the problems I have described will apply to younger educationally disadvantaged people like those I met whilst helping at the Adult Education classes. Consider too, that to have turned up and enrolled at an IT class requires firstly knowledge of the classes' existence, the confidence to apply and self-motivation to attend, let alone overcoming the cost implications. So those people I met were the tip of the iceberg!

I was inspired to write this post by reading this post on Twitter a couple of hours ago. Kevin is going to keep tabs on this family's claim and see how long it takes them to actally receive a payment.

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About Me

I'm a mature perpetual student. I studied with the Open University from 1998 to 2014, history mostly. I used to enjoy volunteering at the local Archives transcribing old documents and helping other people with their Family History queries. I like to think I'm pretty good at IT for someone of my age group, so I can often assist there as well. I've been researching Family History for over twenty-five years, and I've been a Campaign for Real Ale member longer than that. I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease just over nine years ago and had to finish work seven years ago. I reinvented myself as a Local History speaker, specialising in WW1 Soldiers and War Memorials, but had to give that up due to ill health this year. I am an Official Remote Volunteer for the IWM's Lives of the First World War and War Memorials Register projects. In October 2017 I began an MA in the History of Britain and the First World War at Wolverhampton University.